


Absolution

by Alley_Skywalker



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Canon, Prompt Fill, Sappy, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 23:16:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20161732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker
Summary: Though he can hardly believe it, Dolokhov gets to marry the woman he loves after all.





	Absolution

She looked so beautiful in her wedding gown, with the candle in her hand, and the light veil covering her dark hair, curled just slightly at the ends. She wasn’t as young now as when he had first met her, but neither was he. She was, however, still beautiful and the kindest person he had ever met. 

Proposing to Sonya the second time around had been both harder and easier. Easier, because he was older. Because he was more accustomed to losing and he had very little left to lose or to prove. Because he had waited long enough this time to ask her that he could ascertain that if there had been another man in her heart at some point – in another lifetime, almost – then she was trying to let him go, not clinging on to him so hard she might break. 

Harder, because she had rejected him once before and he had reason to believe she might do it again. This time, not for love of another man – although, perhaps that too, that still – but because she did not think him worthy of her. She would not be wrong, Dolokhov knew that. He was the kind of man who had had the most boisterous of youths. More so than many others, even. He had caroused, gambled, slept with married women, dueled, killed. What was worse, he had done this in such a way as to affect her directly. He had cheated her cousin and helped his best friend nearly elope with her _other_ cousin. 

But Nikolai was his own downfall and Natasha was happily married. (And Anatole was dead.) 

_May the past be the past._

Sonya never said those words to him directly, but he saw it in her eyes whenever she looked at him now. He saw it whenever she played with his son, getting her skirts dirty as she kneeled down on the porch or in the grass to be at eye level with him. He had never told her who the boy’s mother was, but she must have known. (Did not everyone know?) Yet, she always treated him kindly, and Toto adored her. That forgiveness was in her eyes when she had taken his hand and said, “Yes, I will be your wife.” He kissed her then, softly and gently, in gratitude and in love. 

Sonya said that it was the war that had taught her to forgive more than she had ever thought possible, but Dolokhov was certain than she had always been like this. Simply, there had never been anyone in her life to not take her goodness for granted. And he swore, silently, in the house of God, as his bride stood beside him, that he never would. 

“God’s servant Fyodor is hereby wedded to God’s servant Sofia. God’s servant Sofia is hereby wedded to God’s servant Fyodor,” Father Grigori droned in a carrying, deep voice. 

The candles they held symbolized purity. Before God, but also, Dolokhov figured, before each other. He sneaked a glance at his wife. Sonya was looking back at him and she smiled with the corner of her mouth. 

Whatever the sins of his past were, the purity of their love would burn them away.


End file.
